Quoll vs Weasel (aka, Dudes Holding Dead Animals)

You'd think that after living here for seven and a half years, I'd be pretty well versed in Australian animals. That's what I thought anyway, until Ben and I had a strange conversation the other day. We were chatting about our favorite Australian animals: I love wombats (so sleepy!), and he thinks the tiny sugar gliders are the cutest (so tiny!).

Ben: I like quolls, too.
Me: A what?
Ben: A quoll. It’s a carnivore a bit bigger than a bandicoot.
Me: How big is a bandicoot?
Ben: Oh…about the size of that [largish] water bottle.
Me: So a quoll would be like the size of a weasel?
Ben: I dunno. How big is a weasel?

At this point, there wasn’t much to do except sit and stare at one another blankly. We'd hit a conversational roadblock. It's funny how you can grow up with something and assume that everyone else knows what it is. It never occurred to me that Ben would never have seen a weasel, and it never occurred to him that I wouldn't know what a quoll was.

For the record - weasel:

Yes, it's dead, sorry. Do you know how hard it is to find a photo of someone holding a live weasel? Thanks, Dead Weasel Holding Dude!

Quoll:

Also dead. And stuffed. Again, sorry. I wanted a person in the photo for scale. Thanks, Dead Quoll Holding Dude!

So there you go. A quoll is about the size of a cat. Or maybe a disturbingly large weasel. I'm here to educate, folks!